[Advice] Any ideas on how to self-publish books and ebooks?
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Hey Gang... Just posted this on a forum thread over at SuperFastResults.com.
Barbs wrote:
Physical Book publishing! anyone done it, know how to do it?
Hi there! I have a client who wants to publish a physical book. (fantastic niche and expert!)
Any ideas how to do this? any companies that do it, market it, etc?
I think I remember some sort of product or service that i saw, some outfit in the US, but I can't remember what it was called to be able to find it again!
I actually just recently published a number of books -- some in some niches and for some projects that I probably won’t share on here. But two more recent books that I’ve published are Media Strategies for Internet Marketers and The Ultimate Press Release Swipe File. These books were self-published through a number of platforms that might be of help to you guys.
Firstly, when it comes to physical books, they were published on Amazon through CreateSpace [www.createspace.com], which I think by far is the best platform for self-publishing if you want to go directly to Amazon. If you want to try and get a broader syndication, there are other services like Lulu and Ingram’s Lightning Source. They’re great for some options but need a little more set-up and harder to work with, so CreateSpace is definitely my choice in that area.
When it comes to Kindle, we used Kindle Direct Publishing [kdp.amazon.com] to publish the books. And we actually used Fiverr.com to get the Word document version of the book converted into the format required. So that was a really good little tip -- to turn the book that we have from the Word format into Kindle-ready format. We also used Smashwords [www.smashwords.com] to get them syndicated to a number of different platforms such as the Apple iBookstore, Sony Reader Store, Kobo and stuff like that. We also published them onto the Barnes & Noble’s Nook platform via PubIt [pubit.barnesandnoble.com].
What I’ve also done is get my virtual assistant who’s actually going to be transcribing this for you guys and posting it here to note down a few other bullet points and some key things that she took from this process because she’s the one who actually did this whole thing--I didn’t do much of it myself. So I’ll get her to put some bullet points here for some of the main points and topics that are relevant.
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Cheers,
Pete
www.PeteWilliams.com.au || www.PreneurMarketing.com
p.s. This response was actually transcribed and posted by my virtual assistant.
p.p.s. Florence here, Pete's VA. Here are some key self-publishing lessons from my perspective:
· CreateSpace (CS) offers several options for your book’s ISBN, (which is required to publish a book) from 'Free CS-assigned' to 'Provide-your-own'. Since we wanted the books to be published under the ‘Preneur Marketing’ imprint, we chose the Custom ISBN for $10. This is only for US-based members though (Pete has lived in the US so has US bank accounts, etc.). We made our address a US PO Box. If you don't have a US-based CreateSpace account, you can buy your own ISBN on other websites and use that if you want.
· Find someone on Fiverr who can format your Word document for submission to Smashwords instead of ordering multiple gigs for Kindle, PubIt and other ebook conversions. This Smashwords (.doc) version of your book can just be tweaked a bit (by removing ‘Smashwords Edition’ and the Smashwords License on the copyright page), then uploaded to Kindle’s KDP and Nook’s PubIt.
· Publish your ebook on Amazon’s Kindle and BN.com’s PubIt manually/directly, and then on Smashwords (for it to also get to Apple iBooks, Sony and Kobo). You get more royalty on Amazon and BN sales that way (Smashwords will take a percentage off the gross royalty) and your book will be available on Amazon.com and BN.com within 24 hours, and then on iBooks and others via Smashwords.
p.p.p.s. Florence again: We're in the middle of testing/reviewing some platforms for distribution of the books’ audio versions to audible - I'll let you all know which way we go once we've published in Audible.com.
